Call Me a Cab

32

“I have the feeling, Toto,” Katharine whispered to me, “we’re not in Oz anymore.”

We sure weren’t. Max’s was a square low-ceilinged wooden room with too many support posts and an ineradicable smell of old beer. A functional but unlovely bar stretched across the back, and perhaps a dozen black formica tables with metal folding chairs were spotted around the rest of the place, leaving a scuffed central area available for dancing or knifefights. A dart-board hung on one side wall and a bowling machine and jukebox stood against the other. Even today’s direct sunlight turned gray as it angled through the filthy plate glass windows in front, creating the impression of heavy cloud outside.

It was still rather early in the day for a place like this. In addition to our quartet — and we couldn’t have looked more out of place here if we’d arrived by flying saucer — there were three stolid heavyset farmhands at the bar, drinking beer and talking about feed prices and politicians, plus another stolid heavyset farmhand behind the bar pretending to be the bartender. This fellow Boyd introduced to us as “my old pardner Farley,” and Farley nodded at us with a half-sullen half-embarrassed little smile, as though he suspected he was somehow being made fun of; though it didn’t seem to me that was Boyd’s intention at all. Far from putting Farley down, I thought, Boyd was determined to lift him up, recreate him as an interesting tough guy in an exciting underworld setting. That neither Farley nor the establishment was capable of this pumpkin-to-coach transformation wasn’t Boyd’s fault; he was fairy-godmothering to beat the band.

As to Max himself, the owner of the place, Farley informed us he’d “gone down to Hays, comin back Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.” In the meantime, Farley himself was just barely capable of dealing with the complexity of our drink orders; gin on the rocks for Laura, bourbon and water for Boyd, vodka and tonic for Katharine, and gin and tonic for me. We’d spent almost an hour in the Rolls Royce, so it was now nearly late enough for a drink anyway.

In that hour, the Chasens had told us so much about themselves that it was astonishing how little I actually knew. Boyd was seventy-four and “retired,” but I had no idea what he was retired from. Laura was younger than her husband — she had girlish fun in keeping the exact number her own secret — and they’d been married fifty-two years, and had never been out of one another’s sight. They’d also lived a lot of places; Greenwich Village in New York in the thirties and again in the late forties, San Francisco during the war years and again in the late fifties, Chicago in the early fifties, New Orleans for a while, London and Paris and Rome at odd moments, and even for six “bewildering” (Laura’s laughingly expressed word) months in Rio de Janeiro. They had moved to Colorado five years ago, for unspecified medical reasons having to do with Boyd. Neither of them, however, looked in the least sickly, nor did either seem in the slightest concerned about illness.

“There,” Laura said, as we settled around one of the formica tables with our drinks. “This is what I call a real joint.”

“Depraved woman,” Boyd said comfortably. “There was one time in Rome,” he told us, “when only the sternest admonitions of the carabinieri kept this wife of mine from stripping to the buff and hurling herself into the Trevi Fountain.”

“Narrow-minded man,” retorted Laura. “What about the time in San Francisco when you rolled all those bowling balls down from Coit Tower?”

“You were amused at the time,” he reminded her.

“I’m still amused,” she told him, and turned to us, her big smile beaming as she said, “You can’t imagine how funny that looked, all those bowling balls careening down that cobblestone street.” Back to her husband, she said, “But you must admit it was childish, all the same.”

“I’ll admit no such thing,” he told her, the perkiness of his manner taking the sting out of the words. “That was part of that experiment, if you’ll remember, with Verner.”

“Men,” Laura decided, shaking her head in amusement, and sipped at her drink.

To me, Boyd said, “I take it you’ll be traveling back this way, without your charming friend?”

“That’s right,” I said, surprised at the twinge the thought gave me, and almost equally surprised that Boyd had paid that much attention. Intermixed among their reminiscences and confidences in our hour together in the car had been a capsule explanation of our own journey together, which the Chasens had received more calmly than anybody else we’d talked to. They had treated it as though everyone they knew behaved in equally unusual ways all the time.

In fact, Boyd had said, “Darling, wasn’t it Phil Waterford took the cab from Chicago to New York with that singer?”

“No, darling,” she’d answered, “they went from Chicago to Boston. That was one of Phil Waterford’s big failings.”

“What was?” Boyd had asked her. “That he took taxis?”

“No,” she’d answered, “that he persisted in going to Boston.”

Now, Boyd told me, “You’ll have to let us know when you’ll be coming through, we’ll lay on a little bash.”

“What a lovely idea,” said Laura, giving her husband a wide complimentary smile. “If there’s one thing in life,” she told Katharine and me, “that I love above all other things in life, it’s a bash. And not a little one, either.”

“You have to be watched, woman,” Boyd said. “You have to be very carefully watched.”

“Only when dancing,” she corrected him, and looked over at the dance floor, her smile not quite buried by a thoughtful frown. “Boyd, darling,” she said, “I don’t hear any music.”

“I do, darling,” he said, “every time you speak.” And reaching into his pocket he pulled out a lot of change.

“Poo,” Laura said, brushing away the compliment with negligent fingers. “That isn’t music. What I want is hot licks.”

“And you shall have them.” Smiling at Katharine and me, Boyd said to his wife, “What say we give these youngsters a treat?”

“Not your owl imitations, dear.”

Astonishingly, Boyd grabbed my hand and plunked three quarters into the palm, saying, “You two go study that jukebox. Play whatever strikes your fancy.”

“But—” I couldn’t believe those quarters. “I don’t know what you’d want to hear.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tom,” he said. “You just go over there — you, too, Katharine — and see what you see.”

There seemed to be some extra significance, some comic extra significance, in this suggestion, but on the other hand there was an aura of comic extra significance about everything these two said. “Well,” I told him, getting to my feet, “you’re the first person ever to trust my musical judgment. Be warned.” And belatedly realized I’d started talking like them. “Come on, Katharine,” I said, resisted additional comments about tripping the light fantastic, and we crossed the room together to the jukebox.

Where we learned the reason for that extra significance. The jukebox, which I’d expected to be stocked with country & western, or even country disco — John Denver at the very best — was choc-a-bloc with golden oldies. But I mean really golden oldies. On the radio, a golden oldie is some miserable turkey barely two years old, but what this jukebox was filled with was big bang swing from the thirties and forties. Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Bunny Berigan, Ray McKinley, Billie Holiday with Teddy Wilson, on and on and on.

Standing over this cornucopia, Katharine and I had our first opportunity for private comment since the Chasens had collected us, and I began it by saying, “You think they’re sweet.”

“I do not,” she said. “Maybe I think they’re scary. Are they pushing very hard, or is it natural?”

“Maybe forty years ago they pushed very hard,” I suggested, “but now I think it’s natural.”

“Do you have the feeling,” she asked, “that a lot of famous people lurk in the background of those stories?”

“You mean, they’re very specifically not name-dropping? Yeah, I had the same impression.” Slotting one of Boyd’s quarters, I made a selection, and Artie Shaw’s Begin the Beguine began to wander like a lost soul around this terrible room.

“But why are they here?” Katharine asked. “They have money, they’re sophisticated, they’ve lived all over the world.”

“Health problems.”

“This is the only spot on Earth with the right climate?”

More quarters, more selections. Shrugging, I said, “I guess it’s the only spot with the right climate and a handy speakeasy.”

Boyd and Laura had started dancing, a bit stiffly but with a lot of élan, and Farley was putting more drinks on the table when we got back to it. Farley gave us a sheepish grin and said, “They’re nice people.”

“This ought to be my round,” I said, though my first drink was barely touched.

“It’s mine,” Farley said, picked up Boyd and Laura’s empty glasses, and went back behind his bar. The other three customers watched the Chasens dance, simple smiles on their honest faces. Katharine and I sat sipping our first drink till our host and hostess returned to the table, with Glenn Miller’s Little Brown Jug beginning to churn in the background. Both of them had somewhat high color, and seemed well pleased with themselves. Boyd grinned at me: “Well? Find anything there you like?”

“As a jukebox,” I said, “I consider it a major national asset.”

“Good man.”

Laura rested a feather-light hand on my forearm. “Tell me the truth, Tom,” she said, seeming unusually serious. “Did you notice Clyde McCoy’s Sugar Blues on that machine?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you play it?”

“No.”

“Good.” Patting my arm, she told her husband, “We can keep him.”

“We’ll have to keep them both,” Boyd said. “They’re a matched set.”

Katharine laughed, surprising me very much. “You two are wonderful,” she said.

“Of course we are,” Laura told her. Somehow, her glass was empty again. “Boyd, darling,” she said. “Let’s pub-crawl.”

“Your restlessness never ceases to amaze me,” he said. His glass was also empty. Rising, he said, “Come along, you two, help me restrain this woman’s wilder impulses.” And he turned to call, “So long, pardner!” to Farley, who offered in return his hesitant smile, plus a small wave from a filthy bar rag. On the jukebox, Little Brown Jug gave way to Count Basie’s One O’Clock Jump.

I said, “Our drinks aren’t finished.” They weren’t, in fact, started.

“Bring them along,” Boyd said. “Farley doesn’t mind.”

“Yoo hoo!” Laura cried. “Farr-lee! We’re stealing your glasses!”

Another smile, another pass of the rag, and this time a nod as well.

So we took our glasses.